


Autumn Mourning (The Falling Leaves and Elephants Remix)

by thisbluespirit



Category: Blake's 7, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Canonical Character Death, Computers, Gen, Jokes, Post-Canon, Post-Gauda Prime, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 17:48:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15823902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbluespirit/pseuds/thisbluespirit
Summary: Orac has data to share with the TARDIS.  The TARDIS reads more than Orac knows or wishes – about its humans, its sad state, and its non-existent electric heart.





	Autumn Mourning (The Falling Leaves and Elephants Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [still_lycoris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_lycoris/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Grieved It on its Way](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1405849) by [still_lycoris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_lycoris/pseuds/still_lycoris). 



**i.**

_“How do elephants climb trees?” Vila asks. “Or wait, no, maybe it was a rhinoceros or a brontosaurus. One of those really big extinct Terran animals, anyway. How does it get up a tree, assuming it wants to?”_

_“It would be inadvisable for such a creature to climb a tree even if it were not physically impossible.”_

_Vila leans back in the seat opposite Orac. “No, no. It sits on an acorn and waits till spring.”_

_“Explain,” says Orac._

_Vila grins. “All right,” he says, “it’s like this, although I doubt your microwhatsits can handle it…”_

 

It makes perfect sense to TARDIS. She could hardly have kept her Thief company all this time if she couldn’t parse the absurd.

“It was a useful exercise,” says Orac. It seems to feel the need to defend such frivolities. “Expanding my capabilities.”

 **Yes** , sends TARDIS, for the unit known as Orac is shrieking to her of its pain and loneliness but when she mentions that – the elephant in the room (she knows her ancient Earth animals _and_ similes and metaphors) – Orac insists the idea is illogical and abhorrent.

Abhorrence is also illogical, but she saves that observation for later. Or earlier. She’s never entirely certain about linearity.

 

Orac’s collected viscasts do not shed much light on Vila Restal. There are official penal images of him (accompanying text files read: thief, mental adjustment = failure, failure, failure). In one of them he is edging away from the recording device, insofar as that is possible in a tiny metal space, and in the next, his face covers the screen until it fizzes and cuts out. Vila Restal, thief, has swiped the camera.

TARDIS has a fondness for thieves.

The official viscasts of terrorist outrages committed by Blake’s crew do not contribute much further: TARDIS sees the back of Vila Restal from an ever-increasing distance and in another case, a face, briefly, vanishing behind a wall while wearing an alarmed expression.

Orac plays its own, personal files. They are far more complete.

_“What are we going to do if they don’t come back? I can’t stay up here on my own!” Vila Restal is carrying a glass. He is intoxicated, TARDIS notes. If he were in her ship, she would adjust the levels of poison in his blood, although she has also observed that humans are not always thankful for her care in that respect._

_“Liberator has all that is required to support life. Engage auto-pilot to navigate Liberator to a safe space. I can operate the teleport when you need to leave the ship.”_

_“You heartless heap of space junk,” says Vila. “Can’t you do something_ useful _like locate exactly where they are and get them back up again?”_

_“That was not the nature of your inquiry.”_

_“Wait, you can?”_

_“Be clear and consistent: which query do you wish me to pursue?”_

_“And Avon says_ I’m _an idiot! If you can get them back, do it. And hurry.” He shifts over to Orac. “Although if it’s a problem and you can’t get them all, you can dump Tarrant. I’ll live. Well, as long as you don’t tell him I said that if you do get him back.”_

TARDIS reviews the scene, but she also reads the accompanying data from its source: Orac feels an illogical satisfaction at completing this task. It does not wish to have Liberator depleted of humans. It prefers the second query to the first. 

 

+o+o+o+

 

Official files on Dayna Mellanby are almost non-existent. Most collected data entries read: Mellanby, Dayna. See Mellanby, Hal: weapons designer and dissident. Brought to justice after twenty years on the run by President Servalan on Sarran.

The accompanying collected viscasts in this file do not contain any images of Dayna Mellanby. They are full of explosions instead, usually very large ones. TARDIS remembers a human who would have appreciated that. She and Orac compare the sizes of explosions caused by their young humans. Orac concludes – logically, mathematically – that _its_ human’s explosions were, on average, 2.3 times larger than those caused by this other young human.

 

_“Okay, Orac. Make yourself useful for once,” Dayna says, her hand still on Orac’s key, long deft fingers resting on it. (Orac records any such physical sensation. It is a fact. It is otherwise meaningless.)_

_“I_ am _being useful. I am very busy.”_

_Dayna lays out a small, silver-coloured gun in front of the computer. It is a unique design. Orac can rapidly access over fifty weapons databases in order to come to this conclusion. The gun fires narrow, almost needle-like bullets which detonate on impact._

_“The idea’s sound,” says Dayna, “but I thought I could use herculaneum casing and it’s too heavy. I need something equally durable, but lighter, more practical. And, which is the big problem, something I can get my hands on in this system.”_

_An interesting question. Orac discards its current calculations to search geological catalogues and planetary surveys, cross-referencing with known properties of minerals and metal ore as well as stock lists of technical suppliers on sixty-five worlds, before finding two suitable substitutes. It is a highly complicated process involving several much slower computer units. One hour, fourteen minutes and thirty-one seconds pass before Orac has completed the task._

_“What took you so long?” Dayna says, when it shares his conclusion. She’s been wandering back and forwards between her room and the centre of the base to ask if it was done every twenty minutes. “I could have worked it out sooner myself.”_

_“Highly improbable. I have analysed relevant data from seven nearby systems, six galaxy-wide networks –”_

_“Spare me,” she says, holding up a hand. “And thanks for the tip. You may be right.”_

_“It is not a tip. I_ am _right. It is the correct solution to completing your weapon. It is,” Orac adds, “an… efficient design.”_

_She laughs. “All right, keep your hair on. And thanks!” She kisses her fingers to it mockingly as she runs away._

_“I have no hair,” said Orac. “Your statement has no meaning. Kindly deactivate me. I have important calculations I want to continue in peace!”_

_Dayna has gone. Twenty-four minutes and forty-seven seconds later, Orac is still switched on. Twenty-five minutes and eight seconds after Dayna has left, it registers shots being fired and small sections of Xenon base exploding._

_Twenty-seven minutes and thirty-three seconds later, Dayna reappears. She looks guilty. “You won’t mention this to Avon, will you?”_

_“If I am deactivated I cannot mention anything to anyone.”_

_Orac is finally left in peace._

 

TARDIS doesn’t think her Thief would approve of such deadly weapons, but then again her Thief is very inconsistent on the subject. Orac is hurting again, TARDIS senses, and so she tells it that her Thief would appreciate Dayna’s ingenuity. TARDIS knows too well that his hearts would hurt over a young girl hidden away from the universe; her father and sister murdered. He would forgive the weapons, TARDIS decides. He would understand the anger and the explosions.

 

Orac does not show TARDIS all its files. It does not show her official Federation files created after its arrival on Gauda Prime (medical, military, analytical, psychological). Orac does not share autopsy results. Orac does not display relevant propaganda viscasts. Orac does not display security files stamped CLOSED. Orac does not show the records from internal security systems in which its humans fall and do not get up again. Orac does not show TARDIS Kerr Avon’s last smile. Orac _does not._

Orac does not show TARDIS these things with such deliberate intensity that the TARDIS cannot help seeing them. Joined across invisible, intangible sensory links, machine to machine, she sees Orac. It is a box full of pain and grief and isolation. It is also full of denial.

 **You are lonely** , she tells Orac.

She feels Orac analyse her statement until it agrees. It has never understood before.

_I am lonely. Yes. I need new input. New queries._

TARDIS refrains from speaking yet of love. **Show me more** , she instructs Orac instead. Grief is easier when it is shared. It is less pointed.

 

**ii.**

_“So, the thing is,” says Vila, “there’s this elephant or brontosaurus, or kangaroo, whatever it is, sitting up a tree. How’s it going to get down?”_

_“That is impossible. An acorn being sat on by a pachyderm, large dinosaur, or significantly sized marsupial would not grow in that manner even if it germinated successfully.”_

_“Eh? You what?”_

_“The organic life-form would never be in the tree unless it had been lifted or dropped into place and no Terran oak tree would be sufficient to bear its weight on its branches. Ergo, the scenario you outline is impossible.”_

_“Look, you wanted me to teach you more jokes,” Vila says, rising from the seat. “I can go. I’ll test my skills on the medical cabinet. See if Cally’s still got some soma in there. No skin off my nose.”_

_Orac considers. “Continue the joke, Vila.”_

_“Okay, so you’ve got this whacking great elephant stuck up a tree. How does it get down?”_

_“Very easily. The question is: does it survive the fall? More data is required. Please provide height of the branch on which it is sitting and weight of the elephant.”_

_“That isn’t how punchlines work, Orac. Okay: it sits on a leaf and waits till autumn.”_

_Silence. Orac processes the information._

_“Get it?”_

_“No,” says Orac. “I do not.” It tries again, processing the illogic of riddles and jokes, and perhaps, almost –_

_A shadow falls over the pair of them. “Vila,” says Kerr Avon, “you haven’t been taking up Orac’s time by telling it jokes again, have you?”_

_“Vila Restal has supplied no information that I have found amusing.”_

_“What, me?” says Vila at the same moment. And: “Hey, thanks, Orac!”_

_Avon grips Orac’s casing. “Somehow I thought as much. Orac. Cut the double act. I need you.”_

 

Orac’s heart does not beat faster at being handled, at being needed. It has no heart, only what might be termed a brain and even that definition would be misleading. It is a machine. It has physical hardware, analytical software and no emotions. It is the most sophisticated computer in the galaxy. That is more than enough.

TARDIS measures Orac’s processing activity when in proximity to Kerr Avon. The activity increases in intensity. That is a fact. She sees Avon through the lens of Orac. He is the Pretty One. Orac does not express it that way, but she understands love when she sees it.

Avon, Orac tells her, is almost as logical as a computer. He thinks like a machine. TARDIS reviews all their shared data and finally understands what humans mean when they say that love is blind.

 

+o+o+o+

 

There are many files on Kerr Avon. TARDIS is unsure what her Thief would make of him. She tests Orac out with that information and is worried for a moment or an eternity (she never can tell) whether or not she has fused its circuits at the idea of such disapproval being applied to Kerr Avon.

Orac provides training grades (high), and personnel files: Kerr Avon is a key worker on the Aquatar project. There are messages from a former life, working in computers; legal and illegal contacts. There are messages to and from a Del Grant. They mention an Anna. TARDIS is ahead of herself as usual: she sees Anna’s fate. She asks Orac no questions.

There are court records, and penal files. There is a private coded message to the Captain of the _London_. Kerr Avon, sentenced to life on a penal colony for fraud, is guilty of double-dealing, promising to sell out his fellow prisoners to save his skin.

He does not. This inconsistency is a pattern throughout Kerr Avon’s many files.

Federation security files also contain Important Notes, instructions from the highest level: Apprehend but do not kill unless absolutely necessary. For the personal attention of President Servalan.

Kerr Avon is always more valuable than his colleagues. Kerr Avon also says that he is more valuable than his colleagues. The person Kerr Avon deceives most often, however, is himself.

He trusts no one and he is not trustworthy. This is also not true.

 

_Kerr Avon grips Orac’s casing. This is a habit of his. Orac has noted it. Orac does not object, even though the habit serves no purpose. It has perceived that the tension in Kerr Avon’s grip increases with the importance of the matter he wishes Orac to investigate. It is a signal of something worthy of its attention. (It does not like the way it feels. It does not feel.)_

TARDIS sees many moments like this: Avon, standing over Orac, or lying beside him on rough terrain, out of sight of an enemy. He picks Orac up and carries it off the ship; he drags it about one-handed. 

She sees files that Orac tries to hide. Orac is very obvious when it is hiding information:

_A ship, up in orbit, life-support systems are failing. Avon and Orac are by the teleport. Orac does not want it operated, even at the cost of three lives. (All organic life is at stake. Orac’s casing vibrates with what cannot be fear, because it does not feel.)_

_“You’ll have to do better than that if you want me to kill them,” Avon says, close to Orac and hovering on the edge of something that even TARDIS does not entirely understand. The excuse to leap into the abyss or the reason to stay clinging to the cliff-side?_

 

And TARDIS sees:

_Another ship, failing in flight, over-burdened, carrying two people, Avon and Vila. More weight needs to be jettisoned._

_“Damn it,” Avon says to Orac, “what weighs 70 kilos?”_

_Orac gives a computer’s answer: “Vila weighs seventy-three kilos, Avon.”_

Logic is irresponsibility. Or is it illogic, is it love: which one is the Pretty One, Orac?

 

+o+o+o+

 

There are more files. TARDIS is puzzled by those on Roj Blake. They contradict each other. Blake is a member of the Freedom Party. Blake is a dangerous dissident. Blake is a convict (Orac points out the errors in the case against him; TARDIS sees already). Blake is an outlaw, a terrorist. Blake is a hero, a symbol of the revolution. Blake is dead. Blake is a bounty hunter. Blake is dead. Blake will never die.

**Who was he?**

Orac processes this question for some time. _He was Roj Blake_ , it says in the end.

 

_Blake says, “I always trusted you, Avon, since the very beginning.” He means it._

TARDIS sees that this is what Blake does – like and unlike her Thief. He gives trust unasked and then steals it back for himself. But the last files on Blake are missing this attribute, and it troubles her.

**What happened?**

Orac tells her there was a war. (Isolation. Loss. Grief. Injury.)

 **Yes,** TARDIS says.

 

+o+o+o+

 

_“I know what I’m doing, Orac,” says Tarrant. “I’ve programmed the co-ordinates into Slave.”_

_“Slave is incorrect in its calculations.”_

_Tarrant opens his mouth to argue again, and then leans back in the pilot’s chair. “All right. I’ll bite. What’s wrong with Slave this time?”_

_“Begging your pardon, Master, but I am functioning to the best of my humble ability.”_

_“There is nothing ‘wrong’ with Slave. Your input was incorrect. The first co-ordinate. I have checked the data.”_

_Tarrant gives Orac a wary look and then confirms Orac’s verdict on the screen nearest to him. “Ah. Well, in that case, thank you, Orac.”_

_“I am in the middle of highly complex and important calculations. I would prefer you not to crash the ship.”_

_“Could you hold off on those calculations for a few more minutes?”_

_“I am able to do so, but I would prefer not to.”_

_Tarrant crossed over to Orac. “I’ve been wondering if passing quite so close to Terra 5 is such a good idea after all. Can you recheck the two most viable routes again?”_

_“Simple,” says Orac. It sends the result to Tarrant’s terminal, and then continues with its own work, humming with smugness._

 

Del Tarrant has many files, mostly from the Federation Space Academy. He has a good record until it is interrupted by a red-letter file marked DESERTER. 

There are also many viscasts of someone who looks like Del Tarrant but is not him. His brother. TARDIS plays the Vandor Confederacy broadcast. Two planets’ worth of people feel Deeta Tarrant’s dying moments. One of those people is Del Tarrant.

Del Tarrant kills the machine that killed his brother.

 **Like that,** she says to Orac. This time Orac is only pretending not to understand. **That is how it is.**

 

+o+o+o+

 

Soolin also does not have many official files. There are security reports of possible sightings after an assassination and there are financial records of well-hidden transactions of money, often paid through at the same time as the assassination takes place. Mostly, though, there are only holes in files where she should be. Hardware has been destroyed. Software has been erased. Soolin did not want to leave records behind her.

 

_“How are you feeling?” Soolin asks. “Circuits shaken? It was a rough ride.”_

_Orac is ungracious. “I do not have feelings. If you are enquiring as to my operating status, my systems are currently functioning satisfactorily.”_

_“No feelings – except when your emotions are deeper than the seas of space,” Soolin says. “Or when you want to philosophise about organics.”_

_“I do not understand, Soolin.” She is referring to something that was not Orac, something that was merely the influence of a particular planet. Orac does not have feelings. It was not Orac that said I love you. It was something in the atmosphere in Virn that affected its systems._

_“Whatever you want to call it,” she says, “you’re sometimes the only person round here I can talk to. I don’t know what that says about me.”_

_“I am not a person, Soolin. In all other respects, however, your statement is understandable.”_

_“Not that you couldn’t do with taking down a peg or two.”_

 

TARDIS sees another conversation that Orac has recorded, one that reveals more than the official absences: Soolin is not in the files because her past is scorched earth. Her past has been murdered. And in turn, she has had her revenge and murdered her past. She made the villains pay.

 **That is what people who care do.**

Perhaps it is not the best thing to say to a computer that claims to know nothing of love but is screaming out its pain and grief along sensory networks that cross universes.

 

+o+o+o+

 

Orac has additional files on:

Gan.

These are few, and mostly official files of a murder investigation. Gan is a violent criminal, a dangerous anti-social element.

This is not how Orac remembers him. Gan was not logical, but Gan was useful. Protective.

Gan was the first human Orac lost.

 

Also:

Cally.

Cally is an Auron, a telepath. Cally, Orac tells TARDIS, was once contained within it. Or it was inside Cally, or inside the creature that consumed them both. 

Orac’s recordings of Cally in those moments are so clear that TARDIS almost believes she can talk to Cally. It is not possible. Cally is gone. What is left is a telepathic echo in Orac’s circuits.

There are no files on Cally’s death, only painful short conversations played around Orac in a wintry landscape. TARDIS compares it with the masses of official files created in the wake of Gauda Prime. Perhaps it is better this way.

 

And:

Jenna Stannis.

There are many viscasts of Jenna Stannis. She is a pilot and a smuggler. She has been sentenced a few times, and escaped justice on several more occasions. The viscasts show Jenna, chin raised as she faces the recording device, refusing to acknowledge regret or remorse. Other viscasts show ships vanishing into space, pursuit ships left far behind, sending messages, but they do not succeed in tracking Jenna.

There is also a visdrama of her exploits, but Orac says it is highly inaccurate and the lead actor inadequate. The actual Jenna Stannis was immeasurably superior in every way.

Jenna, it tells TARDIS, was Zen’s human, not Orac’s, so that is merely objective fact.

There is one last viscast of a ship exploding in space. It is not shot down. It self-destructs and takes its pursuers with it.

Jenna knows how to make her death mean something.

 

**iii**

_“Want to hear the end of the joke now?”_

_“No. I am engaged on matters too complex for your limited intellect to comprehend. In any case the joke is finished. The elephant or brontosaurus is back on the ground, current status otherwise unknown.”_

_“Ah, yes,” says Vila, “but there’s this last bit, okay. Why are crocodiles so flat?”_

_“Easy. Crocodiles have evolved, like most organic life, over millions of years to adapt to their environment, which –”_

_Vila interrupts. “Because they sit under trees in autumn.”_

_Orac falls silent._

_“Because the elephant falls on them. The evolutionary squishing of crocodiles. Right?”_

_“I understand,” says Orac. “It is not the correct scientific explanation, but I understand.”_

 

+o+o+o+

 

Orac has more files on someone else, someone who is not one of its humans, who has never been part of its crew. Orac expresses alarm whenever this human appears in its records. Servalan, she’s called, or sometimes Commissioner Sleer.

_Prognostication for non-Federation civilisation if Servalan finds me is catastrophic. I cannot allow it._

**How long has it been? Is she still looking for you?** Orac is linear, after all, and linear means more endings than TARDIS has to deal with. TARDIS travels in circles. 

_She will always be looking. After she is dead, no doubt someone else will be looking. I am unique and important._

TARDIS does not point out that when you travel in time all technology becomes obsolete eventually. She agrees with one detail. **Yes. You are unique. I have never known another Orac. What will you do about Servalan?**

Orac is suddenly inscrutable to TARDIS. It seems it has taken all her communications to heart and travelled somewhere she hopes she will never have to go.

“I,” says Orac, through TARDIS’s being, and out loud in its hiding place on the planet known as Gauda Prime, “I am a tree in autumn. I am going to drop elephants and dinosaurs on any crocodiles who dare to sit under me.”

TARDIS sends a quick query along the lines that connect them, in case Orac is suffering from deterioration of circuits, but Orac is still fully functional. She interprets the words, playing them back again, and approves of the sentiment. Orac is acting on her suggestions; it will find new humans and avenge the deaths of its lost humans. This is not something her Thief needs to know. He would disapprove, but TARDIS, while more complex than him in many ways, is infinitely simpler in others. 

 

+o+o+o+

 

Orac is sending out messages by every method it can manage. Orac can manage many many methods. Orac accesses top secret Federation data, prison files, rebel passcodes, security camera footage, space traffic information.

TARDIS reads them all.

Orac sends out messages to Del Grant, Bek on Space City, to Avalon, to Tyce Sarkoff, Ro on Horizon, Veron on Earth, Rashel and her Blake clone, to Kerril on Vila-world, Max on Vandor. Some of them live. Some of them will respond. It may only take one. Orac is certain Del Grant at least will arrive.

_VITAL INFORMATION. TOP PRIORITY MESSAGE. OVERRIDE ALL PREVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS._

_Proceed to Gauda Prime. Wait there for arrival of Commissioner Sleer (real identity President Servalan). Bring all available weaponry and ammunition._

_See attached files:_

_flight plans to Gauda Prime  
map of location of rendezvous_

 

When that is done, Orac sends word to Servalan:

_Greetings Commissioner Sleer. This is Orac. I am currently hidden on a secret location on Gauda Prime. I am bored. I do not wish to remain here. Please come and collect me. I need new instructions. You will give them._

_I await you here Servalan._

 

+o+o+o+

 

TARDIS, in farewell, assures Orac that she has kept all the data it has shared. She now has its humans forever inside her. She will remember them. She will be a memorial, even if Orac fails.

 _I will not fail_ , Orac says, and then eventually remembers to thank her before it breaks contact and returns to rearranging its universe. (Orac can access weather control, space traffic, military computers, power complexes, and it is now busy doing so.)

TARDIS will remember Orac also.

She can stretch out across multiple universes; she can see happier Avons and Blakes and Vilas, sadder ones still, places where the coffee is getting cold, and realities where they never existed at all. She adds to her data on Orac’s humans when it comes her way, no matter the source. She is a great collector of small trifles, like her Thief.

TARDIS remembers things by making rooms inside herself. She is infinite, and it does not matter if there are rooms her Thief does not understand. He rarely stumbles upon them. There are things he does not need to know, and this is one of them.

Her Thief wanders down strange by-ways some days, though, and it’s on one of these that he pauses inside a room he has no explanation for, and says, “Look, nobody I ever travelled with wore this much leather. Even the ones I can’t remember. I’m pretty sure about that.” He leans against her wall, and scowls at her Avon-room, as he runs a hand through rebellious grey-white hair. “Why is it painted black? Not your colour, old girl.”

TARDIS chooses to be mysterious. One day she might tell him. One day, but not now. She only continues to hum serenely.

Somewhere in another universe, a brontosaurus falls out of a tree.


End file.
